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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29823816">The Heat of the Moment</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanna_be_goodr/pseuds/Wanna_be_goodr'>Wanna_be_goodr</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Death in Paradise</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Camille is distracted, Case Fic, F/M, Filthy, First Kiss, Idiots in Love, Kissing, Richard is oblivious, Smut, they're idiots</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:14:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,111</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29823816</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanna_be_goodr/pseuds/Wanna_be_goodr</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard and Camille's first kiss leads to a discovery. Just not the kind she was hoping for...</p><p>I mean this is just smut I tried to write a bit of a case sorry if it doesn't make sense I am Not a mystery writer lol</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Camille Bordey &amp; Richard Poole, Camille Bordey/Richard Poole</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>56</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Heat of the Moment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks Sweepeaspatch for triggering the idea and Isailaway for the encouragement!</p><p>I hope you enjoy this, as always please do feel free to comment and leave kudos, I crave validation!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dwayne and Fidel had left to go on patrol around the market and harbour just after lunch. Richard sighed and frowned at the whiteboard in front of him. One victim, three suspects who could only alibi each other, and yet there still wasn’t any sign of a breakthrough. How, thought Richard for the hundredth time that day, did the killer manage to escape the proverbial locked room without leaving a trace of evidence?</p><p> </p><p>At her superior’s sigh, Camille rolled her eyes. She watched him reach up to fiddle with his tie and willed him, for the hundredth time that day, to loosen it or take it off entirely. He didn’t. He had, however, removed his suit jacket and Camille thanked the gods for small mercies. He mopped his brow with his handkerchief and sighed again, leaning against the whiteboard. Camille resolutely ignored the way his shirt pulled taut over his back, exposing the lines of some very pleasing and surprising muscles. At the third sigh that left his mouth in one minute, Camille let out a frustrated groan and snapped.</p><p> </p><p>“Stop doing that!”</p><p> </p><p>“Doing what?” He asked, affronted.</p><p> </p><p>“You, sighing! It’s not going to solve the case and it’s getting really old really fast,” she replied venomously, narrowing her eyes. The frustration at the lack of progress in the case had gotten the better of her too, and her nerves were fried. Richard sighed again. “Oh my god! You don’t even know you’re doing it! Why does everything you do have to be so – so – so English?”</p><p> </p><p>“Right, that is it. Not everything annoying is English, and not everything I do is annoying!”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s debatable.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, I have just about had it with this island! The people clearly hate me, and I’d like to take this opportunity to say that the feeling is <em>entirely</em> mutual! The bloody cheek of these suspects, laughing in the face of a murder enquiry, no less! And the <em>weather</em> – do you know, it hasn’t rained here since LAST YEAR?! And -”</p><p> </p><p>“- it rained last week. And not everyone here hates you,” Camille interjected pointedly. But Richard Poole was on a roll, ranting and raving and waving his arms about, getting himself all worked up. Camille could have taken all her clothes off and danced around chanting the words to ‘God Save the Queen’ and he wouldn’t have noticed. He continued as if uninterrupted.</p><p> </p><p>“- and the bloody fans in the place are the slowest things I’ve ever seen and they’re pointless anyway, the just PUSH THE HOT AIR AROUND! And, to top it all, this bloody – stupid – sodding case makes absolutely NO SENSE, CAMILLE!”</p><p> </p><p>As Richard took his first breath since he started talking, he realised with a jolt that while he had been distracted by his ranting, Camille had moved from behind her desk to stand very close to him in front of the whiteboard. He stood rooted to the spot, breathless, staring at her face. Her eyes roamed over him, and her features were set in a worryingly determined manner.</p><p> </p><p>“You -”, she said as she took a small step closer, jabbing her finger into his chest, “- are an idiot! Can’t you see that if you were to just relax, you wouldn’t get so hot and bothered? And you could always wear something sensible instead of those ridiculous woollen suits – if you weren’t so annoyingly, pompously, arrogantly English you might just learn to LIKE it here!”</p><p> </p><p>He opened his mouth to fire off a sharp retort, but much as he wanted to, Richard couldn’t lecture Camille anymore, because he suddenly found his mouth otherwise engaged. She was kissing him.</p><p> </p><p>Camille was kissing him.</p><p> </p><p>His arms wound round her waist as hers wandered over his chest and shoulders to clasp the back of his head. She opened her mouth in an attempt to get him to deepen this kiss and it worked – the first hint of hers he’d actually understood and acted upon! His tongue licked over her bottom lip and into her mouth to tangle with hers. They could have stood there for hours, but it was probably only a handful of seconds, because Richard had not been able to silence his brain.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>What the – she’s kissing me. Camille. Is kissing me. She was shouting at me less than five seconds ago! Will I ever understand women? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh god this is good. So, so good. Have I died? I think I might have died. No, heart still beating, beating very fast in fact. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh no, what if Dwayne or Fidel come back? Or worse, the Commissioner pops by to check on our progress? Our lack of progress…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No, I’d hear footsteps and have enough time to jump back to a respectable distance.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Unless there’s CCTV here. Shit! No, hang on, that’s unlikely, given that the computers barely work and the fans are almost constantly broken.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>… CCTV… CCTV… CCTV!</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Camille had been thoroughly enjoying herself until her boss had broken the kiss and moved away. She blinked her eyes open and saw him staring at the whiteboard, as if nothing had happened. Anger rose in her, and she opened her mouth to give him a serious dressing down, but he beat her to it and exclaimed, “I’ve got it! Oh, brilliant! Clever… very clever…”</p><p> </p><p>And all of a sudden, Richard was a blur of organised chaos, picking up the phone and calling Fidel while gathering up files and reports. Once he’d told Fidel and Dwayne to follow them to the hotel where the suspects were staying, Richard looked up at Camille.  She couldn’t understand how he looked so composed. He’d been just as into that kiss as she had, she was sure of it. She’d even felt him pressing into her stomach through his trousers. But a quick glace south revealed that there was absolutely no physical evidence of what had occurred between the two of them. At least, not on him.</p><p> </p><p>She was wrecked. He her was a mess from his fingers carding through it god knows when, and her breathing was erratic. She knew she was flushed, and she could feel heat pooling between her legs. She was also a few minutes behind, time-wise, as Richard had to ask her three times if she was alright to drive. Finally, she nodded, and they drove to the hotel wordlessly.</p><p> </p><p>She couldn’t stop her thoughts from returning to that kiss, no matter how many times she told herself to focus on the case, to try to work out what had caused the Inspector’s breakthrough. She tried to think back, to understand what could possibly have distracted him, but she was at a loss. She was undeniably distracted by him.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>How on earth was he so good at that? That needs to happen again, preferably as soon as we finish at the hotel. It’s already halfway through the afternoon, Richard’s explanation and then the arrest and journey back to the station shouldn’t take more than an hour, and by then it will almost be the end of the day anyway. Perhaps I can convince him to forget the paperwork this evening, and maybe come back to mine…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Camille was then lost in her beautiful world of fantasy, where Richard was carefree enough to make love to her on every surface in her apartment. She barely noticed parking at the hotel, calling the suspects down from their rooms at reception, or assembling on the terrace. She only just managed to shake herself from her lust-filled daydream to hear Richard start to speak.</p><p> </p><p>“From the start, this case has been impossible. We had Ben Ward, murdered in his hotel room while everyone else was swimming, able to alibi each other. Only an hour after his death, when his wife, Charlotte, returned to their room in search of him, did anyone realise he was dead. But what troubled me was the fact that Mr Ward wasn’t wearing swimming trunks when he died. You all said in your statements and to my officers that Mr Ward intended to join you all for a swim that day. So why wasn’t he appropriately dressed by the time his wife and two friends had left for the pool? I think he had an appointment with one of you. An appointment that ultimately led to his demise. A confrontation with his killer.</p><p>“He suspected his wife of having an affair. That’s right, isn’t it, Mrs Ward? You were having an affair in the months leading up to your husband’s death?” The woman looked shocked at Richard’s accusation, and one of the other suspects, Grace Lewis, an old friend of Mr and Mrs Ward, looked at her, scandalised. But before she could try and deny it, he rounded on the final suspect, Charlie Fitzgerald, Ben’s best friend.</p><p>“You were sleeping with your best friend’s wife, and you suspected Ben knew, didn’t you? So you managed to convince him to come on holiday out here, an offer he couldn’t possibly refuse. I bet Mr Ward thought he’d outsmarted you. He’d catch you out and get all the money in the divorce. He’d prove your affair by driving you wild with jealousy, forcing you to act. You, Charlie, would have to see him and Charlotte staying in the same small room, spending all their time together on holiday like real happy couples do - Mrs Ward, was your husband especially affectionate in the days before he died? Much more PDA than usual?” She nodded weakly. “I thought so. Now, here is where the uncertainty lies. I don’t know how or when Ben confronted you about the affair, but he did.”</p><p> </p><p>“No!” Mrs Ward had found her voice. Richard silenced her with one of his ‘<em>I know your secrets, shut up and let me do my job’ </em>looks.</p><p> </p><p>“He did. He talked to his best friend first, didn’t he Charlie? He confronted you and the two of you argued, probably. There wasn’t a physical altercation, as there were no defence wounds on Mr Ward’s body. But you were angry. So you left him to muster up the courage to speak to his wife,  returned to your own room, and planned your next move. You arranged to meet before going swimming on the day he died…”</p><p> </p><p>Camille tried to focus on the case, on Richard’s words, but the way the afternoon sun was highlighting his hair and picking out delightful strands of gold distracted her. She watched him move, walking in a deliberate, slow line in front of the suspects, hands behind his back, chest pushed forward. He looked so… good, doing what he always did, being quick and brilliant. Damn, she’d never been so keenly aware of how confident he was when he knew the answers. And she’d never before been so acutely conscious of just how <em>sexy</em> he was and how much she wanted - no, <em>needed</em> him.</p><p> </p><p>She was shaken back to reality when Mr Fitzgerald shouted. Mrs Lewis and Mrs Ward both jumped too.</p><p> </p><p>“But how, Inspector? Hmm? How could I have done it, the ladies were with me the entire time, they told you that!”</p><p> </p><p>“Ah, yes, I was getting onto that. You’re not a nice man, are you, Charlie? No, not at all. Your affair with Charlotte started off well, I imagine. Passionate, romantic, made all the more exciting by the fact that it was a secret. You had to sneak around behind the back of a distracted and hard-working husband.” Charlotte Ward blushed and looked at her fingers, twirling her wedding ring guiltily as Richard continued, “But it went sour quickly, didn’t it, Charlotte?” She didn’t meet Richard’s eyes and he knew he’d won.</p><p>“He started controlling you, didn’t he? Telling you what to do and when to do it, demanding to know where you were at all times, forbidding you from going out on your own. Soon, I imagine, you wanted to go back to Ben, your loving if occasionally absent husband. But Charlie wouldn’t allow it. Bullies tend to be unbearably insecure, you see.” Camille smirked, knowing that Richard had faced more than his fair share of cruel men and survived, had become even stronger, even more determined to do the right thing. That was one of the things she loved about him.</p><p>“It wouldn’t have been hard for a man like Charlie to push you, Mrs Ward, into lying for him, even to the police. I’m sure he managed to convince you by saying that he’d killed Ben for you, to show you how much he loved you. He made you feel like it was your fault your husband was dead.” Mrs Ward burst into tears and Fitzgerald glared at her, making her flinch away and cry harder. “And you, Mrs Lewis. I don’t think you’d have lied to us without a strong incentive. Once you realised that you’d have to give Charlie a false alibi for murder, I think you fought back. Well done.” He looked at her kindly, and she stifled a sob of her own. Camille’s heart swelled. She loved how Richard could go from full of palpable hatred and disgust when dealing with killers to softly spoken and encouraging when he needed to be. He was a good man. Another one of the things she loved about him.</p><p> </p><p>Grace Lewis took a shuddering breath and reached up to take off her sunglasses. When she lowered them, Charlotte gasped and Richard sighed grimly. She had revealed a nasty looking black eye, a day or two old at most.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll testify. He did it.” She said, her voice small but unwavering. Camille felt a rush of respect and compassion for this poor woman, roped into her friend’s messy affair and forced to lie to the police. Richard thanked her, but Dwayne was looking at him quizzically, and behind Richard, Camille had remembered something that hadn’t been explained.</p><p> </p><p>“Yes, Officer Myers, you’re right to still be confused. Using brute force to ensure an alibi wasn’t Mr Fitzgerald’s best idea. No, that was to hide the CCTV footage disc of the second-floor corridor in the case for the CCTV footage of the third-floor corridor. You three and Mr Ward had rooms on the second floor, and Charlie here knew we’d want the footage from two nights ago for that corridor. Charlie assumed, rightly, that we wouldn’t have time to look over the footage from every floor of the hotel – after all, why would we anyway, when we knew which floor our victim and suspects stayed on?”</p><p> </p><p>Camille was in awe of her boss as he explained how Fitzgerald had switched the CCTV DVDs. He had managed to duplicate the footage from the previous day onto another disc, so that it looked as though none of the group had been in the second-floor corridor at the time of the murder, when in actuality Charlie had slipped away to kill Ben. Richard nodded to Dwayne and he produced a DVD case labelled ‘3<sup>rd</sup> floor, 18<sup>th</sup>/6<sup>th</sup>’, the date of the murder, from behind the reception desk. He inserted it into the computer at the desk and opened the window to play it. Everyone but Richard and Fitzgerald looked on in shock as they watched Charlie Fitzgerald sneak up the corridor at the estimated time of death and knock on Mr and Mrs Ward’s door. Ben Ward opened it, and the two men went inside. Ten minutes later, Fitzgerald emerged, looking slightly flustered and with blood on his hands. He entered his own room, then two minutes later left, clean as a whistle, on his way for a swim. Then, around an hour later, three people came back up to the corridor and let themselves into their rooms. Two minutes later, Mrs Ward ran out of her room crying, and Mrs Lewis ran to her and hugged her. Mr Fitzgerald went into the Wards’ room and came out a few seconds later. They all ran downstairs.</p><p> </p><p>At Richard’s request, Dwayne then selected a second DVD case from the shelves behind the reception desk, labelled ‘2<sup>nd</sup> floor, 18<sup>th</sup>/6<sup>th</sup>’. It played, and showed the part of the first recording they had seen, after the murder, with Fitzgerald leaving his room, then the second half of the 17<sup>th</sup>’s recording, with different time stamps to ensure water tight alibis, then it switched back to footage from the first recording and showed the three living guests returning – in essence, it showed the events of the 18<sup>th</sup> exactly as the witnesses had recalled them: the three of them left their rooms, then just over an hour later, they all came back up together and Mrs Ward discovered her husband dead in their hotel room.</p><p> </p><p>Dwayne and Fidel read Fitzgerald his rights, and Richard turned to Camille, let out a breath, and smiled ruefully.</p><p> </p><p>“That was incredible,” she smiled back at him. His face flushed slightly at the praise and he ducked his head.</p><p> </p><p>By the time they were back in Honoré, Camille’s skin was itching with need. Unbelievably, Richard seemed completely at ease and willing to stay on into the evening to dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s of the paperwork before going home. But his detective sergeant had other ideas. After fifteen minutes of staring aimlessly at her monitor, she decided enough was enough and oh-so demurely asked DI Poole if she could speak to him outside. He looked up at her, his dilated pupils the only indication that what had happened between them earlier had been real, not a wonderful but cruel daydream.</p><p> </p><p>Outside she dragged him to the far end of the veranda where the boys couldn’t see them and cornered him against the railings. She huskily told him how <em>hot</em> he’d been solving that case, angling her body so that to the casual observer they appeared to be just two colleagues, maybe even friends, having a hushed discussion. But she was pushing her breasts into his chest and subtly grinding against the front of his trousers, where almost immediately she felt his response, this time harder, hotter, more insistent than during their heated kiss. He’d stopped breathing and his brain was on auto-pilot as he brought his hands to her waist and guided her movements, biting back groans as she muttered absolute filth into his ear – what she’d do to him right here, in front of all the market traders and tourists, in broad daylight if he’d let her, how she touched herself at night when she thought of him…</p><p> </p><p>Suddenly he jerked away and practically ran into the station and Camille’s heart dropped. She panicked - she’d overstepped, she’d ruined their friendship and any chance she had of kissing him again. He’d never even be able to look her in the eyes. She barely managed to hold back her tears, rejection and self-hatred bubbling up inside her stomach, making her feel sick.</p><p> </p><p>Then he was walking back towards her from his desk, speaking loudly.</p><p> </p><p>“It’s getting late. I think we deserve to call it a day here, team. The paperwork is straightforward, and we can finish it tomorrow. Camille, could you drive me home please? I had thought I’d walk but it’s…” he lowered his pitch and looked her directly in the eye, his eyes darkening and his gaze making heat pool between her legs, “far, far too hot out here.” She wasn’t sure what was happening but nodded and collected her bag and the keys to the Defender. She jogged to the car and got into the driver’s seat, wiping away errant tears as Richard was walking down the steps, thanking Dwayne and Fidel for the offer of drinks but insisting that the case had kept him up all night and he just fancied a quiet evening. They shrugged this off and waved to both detectives as they wandered down to La Kaz. Richard sat in the passenger’s seat and, with slightly shaking hands, closed the door. He turned to Camille and murmured, “So, you were saying…?” in an impossibly sexy voice. Camille furrowed her brow.</p><p> </p><p>“I thought I’d… you were… you didn’t want…”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, Sergeant Bordey, I’m afraid you’re wrong. Very wrong. Let’s review: the things you said just then, the moment we shared this afternoon, the way I can barely keep it together every time you look at me like… well, like <em>that</em>… irrefutable evidence. I – I want you. Desperately. But, you see, we are at work.” He leant over to rest his elbow on the top of the driver’s seat, next to her shoulder, and swallowed thickly, a moment of nervousness in an otherwise very confident, <em>very </em>impressive performance. He looked into her eyes, took a deep breath, and continued, “If you would be so kind as to drive me home, we wouldn’t be at work. We’d be in private, out of office hours… alone.”</p><p> </p><p>Before he could draw breath Camille was on him, leaning painfully over the gear stick and holding onto his face for dear life. She planted kiss after searing kiss on his lips as he chuckled and held her shoulders, not quite trying hard enough to actually push her away. When Camille moved back into her own seat, she was beaming. The engine roared to life and she laughed gleefully as they sped off down the road to his shack. He couldn’t help but laugh with her, feeling freer than he’d ever felt. Soon though, he’d had to ask her to slow down for fear of getting them both killed. Richard wasn’t sure he’d ever moved so fast in a road legal vehicle.</p><p> </p><p>Back at his shack, Richard practically jumped out of the Defender and rushed to open the driver’s side door for Camille, which she grinned at. She held his hand as they walked the last few yards to the front door of the shack.</p><p> </p><p>“Uh… do you- do you want anything?” He asked as he let her in and shut the door behind him, gesturing to the fridge to imply an offer of drinks. Camille, however, was crowding him with a thrilling predatory look on her eye as she leant into his personal space.</p><p> </p><p>“You…” she murmured against his collar, and Richard forgot how to breathe. Her sure fingers worked away at the knot of his tie and he was grateful he had the presence of mind to shuck his suit jacket off his shoulders and drape it over the banister. He then grabbed her waist and allowed his lips to find hers again as he gently pushed her so she entered the main room of the shack. She toed off her sandals and Richard found himself taking his own shoes off without first undoing the laces for the first time in his life. He also managed to toe off his socks and kick them far, far away from Camille – the Caribbean heat was not conducive to clamping down on foot odour, after all.</p><p> </p><p>With a growl of frustration which had no business turning Richard on as much as it did, Camille gave up on his tie and began to untuck his shirt from his trousers and unbutton it from the bottom up. Richard grinned against her lips and untied his tie, employing a very well-executed throw to send it onto the banister atop his suit jacket. He then turned his attention to Camille’s blouse, unbuttoning it and carefully removing it from her shoulders before folding it behind her back and placing it on the chair under the window. He allowed his own shirt to be removed and Camille pulled away to drop it on the chair along with hers. She held eye contact with him as she seductively shimmied out of her shorts and left them on the growing pile of clothes.</p><p> </p><p>Richard struggled to hold a cogent thought in his head as he admired her body, clad in beautifully simple but unknowably sexy black underwear. His eyes roamed over her breasts and Camille internally giggled at the memory of accusing him of ogling every large-breasted woman on the island. He looked at her like a blind man seeing the stars for the first time and she knew her jealousy at his attention to other women had been entirely misplaced. Heartened, she pulled him back to her and kissed him hard, pushing her tongue into his mouth as he groaned and ran his hands up and down her back. She unfastened his belt and pushed his trousers down his legs, pulling him over to the bed once he stepped out of them.</p><p> </p><p>Richard gave her a playful shove and she landed on the mattress with a soft bounce as he hurriedly placed his trousers on the chair then stood in the middle of the room, appreciating the sight of Camille Bordey, undressed on his bed and looking up at him with lust and desperation.</p><p> </p><p>Camille made a mental note of the image before her, of Richard Poole in just his boxers, chest flushed and hair tousled, lips swollen from her kisses. Just in case he suddenly came to his sense and remembered that he was uptight, English - and her boss - she’d need something to think of when she touched herself. If this wasn’t the epitome of sexy, she didn’t know what was. Quite frankly, if it wasn’t this, she didn’t want to know.</p><p> </p><p>Richard leaned down and knelt on the bed, placing his weight on one forearm as he leant in to kiss her again, trailing his other hand down her side before looking her in the eyes and asking her if this was ok. Nodding emphatically, Camille told Richard that if he stopped now, she’d kill him. Richard didn’t doubt her for a second, so he unclasped her bra and threw it onto the floor of the shack. Staring down at her bare chest, he swore under his breath before reaching down to tease one nipple with his hand and the other with his mouth. Camille arched her back and sighed in pleasure, and after a few minutes of basking in her delicate sounds and the feeling of her fingers softly scratching at his scalp, Richard trailed his kisses lower and lower until he got to the waistband of her underwear.</p><p> </p><p>Looking up at her to once again check this was what she wanted, Richard traced the lace edging of the garment with his fingers teasingly until Camille was begging him to do <em>more, now, please.</em></p><p>
  
</p><p>Unable to refuse her even if he’d wanted to, which he absolutely never wanted to do if it meant she stopped looking at him like <em>that, </em>Richard deftly removed her underwear and flung it to the side to join her bra on the floor. He kissed from her knee all the way up to the apex of her thighs, then moved back down to her knee to tease her. She groaned and pulled his hair sharply, and Richard hummed in amusement as he made his way back up to her folds, where he quickly found her clit and licked it gently, making Camille gasp and buck her hips up into his face. Grinning smugly at how quickly boring old Richard Poole had managed to reduce his fiery sergeant to a wanton mess, he braced one arm over her hips to hold her in place on the mattress and stroked his other hand up and down her thigh before pushing his fingers into her slick heat. Camille moaned.</p><p> </p><p>Working his fingers in and out of her, Richard leant back down to suck and lick at her clit, causing a cry of arousal to leave Camille’s mouth. Richard absently thought about how he loved that sound so much he wanted to set it as his alarm on his phone. <em>Waking up to that every morning wouldn’t be so awful</em>, he mused, <em>but then again, it would mean I’d turn up to work late, given that I’d have to deal with the effect it had on me every morning.</em> Then, Camille made another, sexier noise than her previous one, and Richard realised that the more worked up she got, the better the sounds would be. Maybe there would always be better sounds. <em>Perhaps I’d just have to wake up next to the real thing every morning</em>, Richard concluded.<em> Now there’s a thought…</em></p><p>
  
</p><p>Any other thoughts Richard may have had about the future were instantly forgotten as Camille approached her peak. She was moaning loudly now, chanting his name and <em>don’t stop </em>and <em>keep going </em>and <em>please </em>over and over until she shouted as she came, unleashing a stream of French filth that Richard would surely have blushed at if he’d understood it.</p><p> </p><p>She lay still, gasping and boneless as Richard kissed his way back up her body, paying particular attention to her breasts. When she regained control of her limbs, Camille pulled his face to hers and kissed him fiercely, tasting her arousal on his lips, causing her to moan and grind against him once more.</p><p> </p><p>“Insatiable,” he murmured, a smirk playing at his lips. She rolled her eyes and smacked him on the shoulder, and though neither of them would admit it, they were both glad that they could still banter, even after this. Richard was gearing up to make a sardonic comment about him knowing the French were all sex-mad, but she managed to silence him before he’d even opened his mouth by reaching under the waistband of the only item of clothing separating them and firmly stroking along his length. He let out a strangled sort of gasp and now it was Camille’s turn to grin smugly at him.</p><p> </p><p>“If I’d known it was this easy to get you to shut up, I’d have dragged you to bed far sooner,” She said as she sped up her hand and he thrusted blindly into her fist. He managed a derisive sound at the back of his throat and pulled Camille’s fingers away from him. Moving away briefly, he removed his boxers then returned to the bed, where she was rooting around in her bag.</p><p> </p><p>“Aha!” She whispered triumphantly as she held up a foil packet. At his raised eyebrows she said, “What? You must always be prepared. You taught me that,” and without further ado, she rolled him onto his back and straddled him, putting the condom on for him. He spluttered and his hands flailed about at her waist without any real purpose, so she grabbed them and planted them on her hips as she lifted herself up to sink down onto him. He stopped her with a slightly desperate cry and tightened his grip on her.</p><p> </p><p>“W-wait, wait – are you sure? I mean, you don’t have to… we don’t have to, you know… I mean, it’s alright if you want to -”</p><p> </p><p>“Stop.” She leant back and sat on his thighs.  “If you ask me one more time if I want this, want you, I will go mad. I have wanted you from the first moment we met, it just took me a little while to see it. Yes, you are pompous and uptight, but you are brilliant, you are kind and funny and when you let yourself be open, you’re a wonderful friend. You always do the right thing, even if you often say the wrong thing,” she smiled and he grimaced. “But, Richard Poole, I want you. All of you. The good and the bad.” She didn’t say what she thought after that, worried she might scare him off. <em>For better or worse, because I love you.</em></p><p> </p><p>Stunned by her impassioned speech, Richard looked up at Camille in silence. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before looking her in the face.</p><p> </p><p>“I want this too. I want… I want you. Camille, you’re easily the most frustrating and difficult-to-understand person I have ever met but… you’re right. It took… It took me a while, too… If this is what you want -” she nodded. “Then so do I.”</p><p> </p><p>They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment, each seeing nothing but honesty and affection from the other. Camille leant down to kiss him and he cradled her face, running soft, caring fingers through her curls before reaching down to encourage her onto him. She sunk down and they both groaned, the kiss becoming heated and desperate as Camille moved on top of him. Having him inside her, after all this time, Camille had to keep reminding herself if wasn’t a dream.</p><p> </p><p><em>This is really happening</em>, they both thought, not believing their luck. She rocked against him and he thrust up into her, both moaning and gasping, revelling in the sensations.</p><p> </p><p>As Camille tightened around him, Richard moved a hand between them and circled her clit with his thumb, applying just the right about of pressure for her to start bucking into his touch, causing his length to reach just the right spot inside her. She screamed as she came, riding him wildly, and at the back of his mind Richard was glad he lived in an isolated shack on a stretch of empty beach. He watched her, enraptured, as her face contorted in pleasure and her voice cracked, her dark curls bouncing on her shoulders as her hips moved without her control, chasing her high.</p><p> </p><p>Everything about the picture in front of him, the sounds and the feeling of her clenching him in the most intimate way, the smell of her perfume and the broken cry of his name on her lips, sent Richard headlong into the best orgasm he’d ever had. His eyes scrunched and his muscles clenched and he choked out her name as his world went black.</p><p> </p><p>Once Richard had come to, Camille had flopped onto her back beside him and was breathing just as heavily as he was. They lay there for an indeterminate period of time, breathing slowing, the sweat cooling on their skin.</p><p> </p><p>“Explain yourself.”</p><p> </p><p>Richard looked over at Camille, brow furrowed. Her expression was unreadable, and he blanched, terrified. He had asked her, lots, if what he was doing was alright with her. She’d seemed so… enthusiastic… Had she faked it? <em>Could</em> she have done? Or what if he’d done something wrong at the…uh, pivotal moment? Oh god, he hadn’t said something stupid like <em>will you marry me</em> had he? Or worse, had he said someone else’s name? He couldn’t think who on earth he could possibly find more attractive than Camille, so at least that explanation seemed unlikely. In his panic, Richard only just heard Camille’s next words.</p><p> </p><p>“How did you get so <em>good </em>at that?”</p><p> </p><p>Richard smirked, beyond pleased she was satisfied, relived that he hadn’t messed it up. Emboldened by her praise, he propped himself up on his elbow to tease her.</p><p> </p><p>“What, you haven’t ever had it as good as that before?” His tone was playful, teasing, fully expecting her to laugh and shove him, to tease him back and tell him it wasn’t <em>that</em> good… but she didn’t. Suddenly, she was shy and a little embarrassed.</p><p> </p><p>“…No…</p><p> </p><p>Richard spluttered, completely thrown. Her tone of voice, the fact that she was reticent to meet his eyes… Was she telling the truth…? At his incredulous look, Camille continued. “What? Not every man is as… considerate as you! You have to know that… surely?”</p><p> </p><p>“So… you’re saying that…no one’s ever tried that hard the first time? To make sure you enjoy yourself as much as possible?”</p><p> </p><p>“No, not the first time… It gets better the more you do it though. Usually.”</p><p> </p><p>“Bastards…” Richard muttered under his breath, shaking his in disapproval.</p><p> </p><p>Camille grinned at his over-protectiveness and jealousy and reached over to pull him closer and kiss him again. They stayed like that for a while, kissing languidly, running gentle hands over faces, sides, backs. They broke apart, staying close, and Camille opened her mouth, only to close it a moment later, as if unsure of how to proceed. Richard pulled away. “You wanted to say something…?”</p><p> </p><p>Camille asked him how on earth he solved the crime whilst kissing her for the first time, looking a little offended that his attention hadn’t been fully on her. He resolved to make it up to her by making sure she has some difficulty walking tomorrow…</p><p> </p><p>When the Commissioner asks, DI Poole will say he re-watched the CCTV footage and it just suddenly clicked.</p><p> </p><p>Privately, however, Richard will always claim that the rush of blood from his head shook loose the final clue he needed to solve the Ward case.</p><p> </p><p>Camille promises him that whenever another next dead-end case comes along, she’ll always be there, more than willing to shake any and all clues free…</p>
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